The Respest of A Athletic Director

If you are an athletic director in 2012, you are thinking about how to improve sportsmanship in your athletic program. You may have revamped your athlete conduct code and put initiatives in place for promoting positive behavior. Maybe one of your teams has won a sportsmanship award from your state association.

But while guidelines and positive reinforcement programs have their place, it’s important that we also address the crux of the matter: Good sportsmanship is really about respect, plain and simple. When athletes respect themselves, their teammates, their opponents, and the game, sportsmanship happens.

How can an athletic director teach his or her athletes respect? That’s a heck of a question without a simple answer. But it’s a question we must tackle if we want to cultivate real sportsmanship in our programs.

Most people agree that respect should be taught at an early age, primarily by parents. But this obviously doesn’t always happen. And even when it does, outside influences can muddy the message. When our kids see professional athletes acting inappropriately, it makes a big impact. And that’s something we can’t control.

What can we control? We can control what our coaches teach their athletes and what they emphasize in team meetings. We can set good examples by the way we solve problems. And we can ensure that coaches themselves exhibit respect at all times.

That brings me to our athletic director at TCCHS Mr Carlton Evans. Mr Evans has made a vast improvment in the way our coaches communcate with our players. Evan has made our coaches undrestand that teaching our kids is better than down grading them. Sportsmanship was almost dead at TCCHS. Players with no care and no understanding of the game can make for a long season. I'm not talking about win or loss records. Respect is what I'm talking about.

When I first came to Todd County, Other schools didnt like playing us because of our respect for the game. Thank You Mr Evans for showing us the light. I hope that he knows that his work with the program has mede it successful in many ways. I hope that he is going to be with the program much longer. I feel that this is a baby program now, But with his direction and respect for the game TCCHS will be bringing home gold soon. Sometimes our programs overshadow our AD. Mr Carlton Evans casts a respectively large shadow. I like to thank Mr Evans and wish him best of luck in the future.